Derek's First week At Veggie City!!!

Hi my name is Derek McLay and I have recently been hired to be a supervisor in the Veggie City Program. My week started out with meeting with Katie Knapp, who has also been hired to work in the same role as me in the Veggie City Program.  We started our week by meeting with some of the youth in the Veggie City team, and they walked us around the neighbourhood to see all of the gardens. It was quite the day, getting to know the youth and getting to see all of the houses. From there we just jumped right into work, watering, weeding and spending quality time with all the youth. On Wednesday we would experience our first pick up day, most of the day was spent gathering all of the vegetables that are ready for everyone to enjoy. We bring everything back to the hub to count it, and ready it for all the shareholders to take home. The highlight of that day for me was counting 744 cherry tomatoes!!! We spent the last 2 days of the week, really  getting into the gardens and trying to get them picture perfect, as we found out that they were due to be photographed for an end of the year wrap up book. These 2 days was a lot of hard work, and at times it seemed we would never get through it all, but with our noses to the grind and fingers getting dirty we were able to clean it all up. I am really looking forward to week 2, and really starting to help the program grow!!

VEGGIE CITY DISTRIBUTION NIGHT #3

Blogito by Angelito :O

Watering, picking weeds, giving love and harvesting vegetables, that’s just another regular day for the Veggie City Crew. After picking all our vegetables we gather them together, wash them, and separate them for our shareholders, who come later that day to our distribution night to pick them up. These days are quite special because we get to talk to many residents of the neighbourhood, and unpredictable things happen.

            Last distribution night, two residents showed up to try or delicious dipping sauce, they basically sat down and ate half of it, even though they weren’t shareholders of veggie city. That’s alright though; we now know that for our next distribution night we should have more things for people to try! They weren’t the only community residents that decided it to try our sauce...we had many other residents that came discretely to try it while we were talking to our shareholders.

             There was also a particular resident who came to talk to us and try our dipping sauce. What was interesting about this resident was the fact that she decided to debate one of our team members, by stating that women were better than men and it was a very entertaining experience. We would like to thank all our shareholders and residents for being freaking awesome!

VEGGIE CITY RECIPES

Blog by Sosina, Hayat and Dan

At the request of residents Veggie City has been in the kitchen making up recipes with our fresh herbs.
Here are some of the recipes we have created. We hope you enjoy!

Veggie City Garlic Sauce

½ cup of extra virgin olive oil

Bunch of oregano

Bunch of chives

3-4 cloves of garlic

¼ cup white wine or rice wine vinegar

Blend all ingredients together and enjoy! This is extra yummy on pizza!

Veggie City Pesto Sauce

2 handfuls of fresh basil

½ cup extra virgin olive oil

¼ cup almonds or walnuts (pine nuts are just too expensive these days!)

3-4 gloves garlic

¼ cup hard cheese like romano or parmesan

Salt and pepper to taste

Blend all ingredients together and enjoy! Great with spaghetti!

Watermelon Mint and Feta Cheese Salad

Mint is a hard herb to know what to do with, here is a summer salad recipe that is super delicious!

1/4 cup fresh mint sliced

Half of a small watermelon cut in cubes

1 cup feta cheese cubed

3 to 4 tablespoons balsamic reduction *

Combine first 3 ingredients and drizzle reduction on top of salad. ENJOY!

*Balsamic Reduction

Combine equal parts balsamic vinigar and sugar in a pot

Simmer on medium-low heat until reduced to a syrup

Refrigerate after it cools

Use this on salads , on steak with strawberries or as a dip for tomatoes

If you have any great recipes we would like you to share them with us :)

VEGGIE CITY'S FIRST DISTRIBUTION NIGHT!

Hayat's blog:

Our first distribution of fresh veggies was on Wednesday July 13, 2011.  Some of the Veggie City crew helped the sponsors to get their Vegetables. First we picked all of the ripe veggies and herbs, then we had to set up a tent and get a lot of boxes with vegetables in it. There were a lot of vegetables; for exemple,  there were; Banana Peppers, Berries, Rosemary, Parsley, Cilantro, Basil and Mint. It was a lot of fun working with the crew, even when some of them decided to leave because they were tired!  I offered to stay and spend the time working with Eric, a member of the Veggie City crew.  We made a lot of distributions and I ended up having one box of the vegetables left to take home to my family. It was a good day, great for making connections with the crew and residents and made a lot of effort spending my day giving good and delicious vegetables for every sponsor.